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Plastic Parts, Plastic Hearts

by Sandra Goldmark

January 11, 2019

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Sandra Goldmark is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Barnard College, where she serves as Director of Campus Sustainability and Climate Action. She is the founder of Fixup, a social enterprise aimed at building a healthy, circular, model of consumption.

One Christmas, Claire brought us her favorite stuffed reindeer to fix. She brought him to one of our holiday pop up repair events. In the spirit of the season, we wanted to fix him for a reasonable price. When we opened him up and found a cracked plastic gear, we groaned.

Context: I’m the Founder of Fixup. Our aim is to build a healthy, sustainable, circular economy of good “stuff.” We operate short term repair shops and events, and help others build repair and reuse into their organizations. We’ve fixed thousands of household items and have a repair success rate of about 85%. A fair number of our successful fixes – and a disproportionate number of our “repair fails” – have involved plastic.

Inside Claire’s reindeer’s stuffed chest cavity, a set of plastic gears connected to a small motor. One of these gears was cracked and couldn’t grab the neighboring cog, so the deer’s legs didn’t move. We groaned when we discovered this because plastic is, very simply, a pain to fix. It’s hard to glue, you can’t really refinish it, and once compromised – cracked, scratched, nicked – it’s very hard to do anything useful with it at all.

When plastic is used on component parts that take any stress, especially moving parts, it can mean that one small break makes the entire object useless.

There are lots of other items that have this problem, and once we confronted the problem over and over again in our repair shops, we began to experience very concretely the impact plastics can have on our stuff, our waste, and our patterns of consumption - in more ways than the obvious plastic bags and bottles.

One of the items that launched Fixup was what I call a “fake nice” desk lamp. I purchased it at a Kmart. It’s brushed silver in color, and it resembles a high-quality swivel neck desk lamp. But it had a plastic part right in the swiveling part of the neck - exactly where all the stress is concentrated, the point with the largest range of motion. Not surprisingly, the lamp broke right at that plastic piece, and the head now dangles grotesquely from the arm (or shoulder, perhaps I should call it). This is why I call the lamp “fake nice.” It looked good, but it was designed to fail.

Plastic is, overall, very difficult to work with, from fixing obvious breaks to simple maintenance. It’s doesn’t take glue well, it can break when you try to drill into it, and it’s tricky to refinish. Plastic looks good new, and it’s relatively easy to clean – but only up to a point. Once the finish or the structure is compromised, it is much harder to renew than other materials.

One might say there are lots of high tech ways to solve the problems of broken plastic parts - why not just 3D print a new one? That’s technically possible, but our aim for our customers is convenient, quality, affordable repairs. We need to be able to diagnose and fix each item quickly and easily. We could, for example, have 3D-printed a new part for the reindeer’s heart or my lamp’s neck. But the amount of time it would take to scan the old part - since manufacturers do not make parts drawings available, by and large - adjust the drawing as needed, and print the new part would make it cost prohibitive. When the basic material choices are not sound, just throwing more plastic at the problem isn’t the right solution.

From a fixer’s point of view, one solution is more thoughtful design and material choices to begin with. Repair is much easier when the original design considers the full life of the product, and plans for a long life. We’ve fixed thousands of lamps, chairs, and toys in our shop. It’s very quick and easy to fix things with relatively simple technology – when they are made well, and when the broken part is not plastic.

A short look over our database of repairs reveals a depressing litany of moments when we were stymied by plastic, unable to complete the fix and forced to send the object back to the customer, most likely consigned to the trash.

We keep track of what the customer tells us when they bring the object in, and we record the fixer’s steps, and success (or not). Here is a sample of some of the ways plastic crops up in our database. You can practically hear the frustration in the fixer’s voices:

From the customers:

fix deformation of plastic

wobbly - plastic part broken

plastic pieces are broken

always reads open, doesn’t play. Plastic hinge broken

won’t sit in stand because broken plastic, please figure out how to fix

We often think of the problems with plastics as a question of single use items – water bottles and grocery bags and picnic forks. These items are designed to be used once, and discarded, and the problems inherent in this system are enormous. But my journey into the entrails of Claire’s reindeer, and the hundreds of other little plastic parts we’ve fought with over the past 5 years, have taught me that plastic makes many objects disposable.

The basic design of the reindeer’s workings – and my lamp, and many of the thousands of objects in our database of repairs, are fundamentally compromised by the incorporation of plastic into designs in a way it should never have been used.

That’s why we groaned when we saw Claire’s little reindeer’s broken plastic cog during his open-heart surgery. We knew we were up against a tough fix. We managed to epoxy the gear. We managed to get the patched gear into the reindeer (it took two tries). We restuffed him and stitched him up, and we laughed and maybe even cried a little bit when he danced and sang: a little Christmas miracle. Though, to be honest, I have to admit that I am not sure how long his new heart will last. It wasn’t what we call a good fix.

It’s hard to imagine a world without plastic today. But it is possible, for me, to imagine a world where new goods are no longer condemned from the start to disposability by “fake nice” design, where cheap plastic parts that cannot possible take stress are used in joints and as levers, and where plastic is used judiciously, thoughtfully, responsibly. It’s possible to imagine a world where we work hard to take care of what we have, whether it’s little reindeer or lamps or our homes or even the New York City subway system, by designing it well in the first place, maintaining and repairing it, and giving everything we make as long a life as possible. Because beyond just lamps and reindeers, the spirit and culture of maintenance is something that I believe our culture is sorely lacking. But it’s certainly possible to imagine it growing – to imagine that we might break our single-minded enthrallment with new stuff, and begin to perceive, protect, and increase the value of all that we already have. It’s possible to imagine that Claire’s reindeer is still dancing and singing somewhere – I hope he is.

What do you think?

The Human Health Impacts of Plastic

by Alexis McGivern

January 21, 2019

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For a long time, plastic pollution has been defined as an oceans issue, with many players referring only to the issues as 'marine litter' or 'ocean plastics'. In fact, the impacts of plastic are far more wide-reaching, affecting populations far from the coasts. Human health is affected by plastic at each stage of the life cycle, from extraction of raw materials, through production, during use and after disposal.

During production

In order to make plastic, fossil fuels like oil and natural gas are extracted and refined into different fractions, meaning the different hydrocarbons contained within these fossil fuels are separated out into individual monomers.

The ´cracking` of these hydrocarbons is done in petrochemical factories, affecting nearby communities through contamination of the air with pollutants and carcinogens. St. James Parish, Louisiana, one of the hubs of the American petrochemical industry, is also known as “Cancer Alley”, so-called due to its disproportionately high rates of cancer as compared with the rest of the United States. Residents attribute to this to the high concentration of petrochemical factories, and, in recent weeks, have been organising against a proposed $9.4 billion chemical plant proposed by the Formosa Petrochemical Corporation, citing the irreversible human health impacts as a key concern.

It is, of course, no coincidence that the majority of these petrochemical factories are located in communities predominantly populated by people of colour, thereby adding an additional layer of environmental injustice onto this issue.

Monomers are linked up through a process known as polymerisation in order to make plastic polymers, which are the basis for all plastic products. Then, the product-specific properties of different plastic items, such as malleability, durability and colour, are generated through the inclusion of additives. These affect health through exposure during the use phase of plastic.

During use

Plastic affects human health through the multi-pronged exposure to chemicals in plastic, with differing impacts according to the specific additives and the levels of exposure. Chemicals from plastic migrate from food packaging into food through heat, long-term storage and small surface-area ratios (i.e., small packaging sizes). The additives included during the production process affect our health through disruption of our delicately-balanced endocrine systems, the glands and organs and that produce, store and secret hormones.

Our ability to effectively regulate and minimise the negative impacts of additives in plastic is severely hampered by a lack of transparency from industry on what additives are even included in plastic products. The majority of these additives have not been tested, and therefore cannot be meaningfully assessed for their potential dangers or restricted from the market. In many places, regulatory bodies, like the Food and DrugAdministration in the United States, cannot keep up with the proliferation of new chemicals entering the market each year and therefore many enter the market without a full understanding of how they might impact our health and environment.

Phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA) are two additives used in plastic that have been widely tested, and have been collectively linked to early onset puberty in girls, increased obesity prevalence in adult men, breast and prostate cancer and reproductive abnormalities.

In response to the growing controversy over BPA, many plastic producers in the United States, Canada and Western Europe self-regulated and phased out most of BPA from food grade plastics. However, BPA was largely replaced with BPS and BPF, two additives which, while chemically different to BPA, have been shown to have almost the exact same effects on our health.

After disposal

The impacts of plastic after its disposal depend largely on what pathway it takes after consumption. Organisations like GAIA, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, have highlighted the human health impacts of incineration plants, citing both the occupational health impacts as well as those on populations living near to incinerators. Exposure to dioxins, heavy metals and biomarkers have been linked to lung, larynx and liver cancers, respiratory effects and congenital abnormalities, among other impacts.

Open landfilling outside of sealed engineered landfills and open burning, two techniques commonly employed in areas without waste management infrastructure, affect nearby populations through contamination of groundwater sources and through chemicals released through burning plastic.

When plastic ends up in the ocean, it can end up back on our dinner plates through fish or even salt, making us at risk for ingesting not only the plastic pieces themselves but also all of the associated toxic chemicals that it has been exposed to in the water, including many persistent organic pollutants POPs. It is, however, still unclear how pieces of plastic that have not been exposed to any additional chemicals affect human health during ingestion.

What now?

As plastic pollution becomes more widely understood as a human issue, as well as an environmental one, the pressure on manufacturers of plastic will hopefully increase and therefore encourage different product distribution models, fewer greenwashed solutions and options that are safer for our health and for the planet.

On an individual level, minimising or eliminating your own consumption of plastic, where possible, can help limit your exposure to the wide range of chemicals included in everyday items. You can limit the chemical migration between your food packaging products and your food by following guidance from the Food Packaging Forum, namely heating your food in inert containers like glass rather than plastic, limiting the storage time of foods in plastic and avoiding small portion sizes to limit the exposure through a high surface-to-volume ratio.

Finally, and most importantly, transparency from industry players is vital in order to assess the wide range of additives used in plastic for their potential health and environmental impacts.

The precautionary principle is of utmost importance, allowing regulators the time and capacity to assess the wide range of chemicals that we are exposed to on a daily basis and regulate as necessary.

What do you think?

Inside the Plastic Problem at the United Nations

by Alexis McGivern

January 15, 2019

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Alexis has been championing low-plastic living since 2013. She previously worked on plastic pollution policy solutions for the International Union for Conservation of Nature and is currently conducting research with the Plastic Pollution Emissions Working Group.

Few environmental issues have captured the cultural zeitgeist like plastic pollution. Its effects are visible, its victims widespread, and its solutions are (relatively) clear and uncomplicated: we must drastically reduce the amount of plastic we are producing, using and throwing away, so as to give ourselves a fighting chance to tackle this global problem. In recent years, plastic pollution has morphed from a largely local and grassroots issue into one that is being discussed by the international community at the highest level: the United Nations. In a recent meeting of member states and experts, global politics played out in a small room in Geneva, demonstrating why solving this issue is frustratingly complicated.

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) is the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment.Created in 2012, this assembly meets every two years in order to discuss and set priorities for sustainability action for all participating stakeholders. These include but are not limited to member states, UN agencies, accredited NGO members,technical experts, business and industry representatives, indigenous peoples and youth groups. At the third meeting of the UNEA, over 200 states adopted a resolution establishing a process for ongoing coordinated international action to combat marine litter and microplastics, creating the Ad Hoc Open Ended Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics (also affectionately known as AHOEEG). This group was tasked with investigating three possible pathways for member states to agree upon at the UN:

Option 3: Create a new global architecture with a multi-layered governance approach.

An almost 200 page report identified key issues to overcome, including the lack of an institutional mandate to stem the issue upstream, especially a mandate to reduce production, a lack of global standards for national monitoring on consumption, use, final treatment and trade, of plastic, and the poor application of due diligence and polluter pays principles when it comes to collecting and properly managing plastic waste. It’s worth noting that all member states agreed that option 1 is not viable, but the question is how does this move from just words into genuine and worthwhile commitments?

During a whirlwind week at the UN attending the AHOEEG, it was fascinating to see the dynamics of developing and developed countries, public and private sector, activists and politicians and many other stakeholders play out within a microcosm of the globe. In order to solve plastic pollution, we need delicately coordinated global action – this much is certain and (mostly) agreed upon by all stakeholders involved.

The delicate part comes in, as it does with all major environmental issues, in identifying a solution that is more than just the lowest common denominator.

What are the main issues that hamper more effective global action on this issue?

Finding common ground

With environmental issues, everything can be contentious: including the terminology you use to refer to an issue. There was debate among players at the UN over the term “marine litter”, which many developing states and NGO stakeholders argued implies the only issue with plastic is when it is mismanaged and ends up in marine environments. This narrow definition limits the scope of discussion (and potential solutions for the problem) and excludes the many other non-marine related impacts of plastic, including on human health. However, widening the scope also vastly narrows your ability to reach consensus among players, which made some NGO players reluctant to include the full force of issues related to plastic pollution.

Lack of transparency

Plastic pollution is an environmental issue plagued by a lack of transparency at every turn. There is limited information shared on what chemicals even make up different plastic items, with industry tightly controlling the list of ingredients and additives in products under the guise of protecting trade secrets.There is limited transparency on the genuine effectiveness of solutions, leading to greenwashing solutions like recycling to take centre stage. There is a lack of transparency from developed countries over how and where they are shipping their waste, and how that affects people on the other end. There is a great deal of mystery over how much business and industry directly influence political opinion on these issues: it seems that they have politicians’ ears once they start discussing selection of factory locations, bringing economic prosperity at the cost of human health and environmental damage, or even directly through funding of political campaigns.

This influence was painfully evident in Geneva, with many delegates from G7 countries openly huddling with business and industry players during coffee and lunch breaks over the five days at the UN.

Without transparency, it is impossible to meaningfully assess what action can and should be taken by different stakeholders.

Mismatched will

Over and over again, wealthy developed nations pushed hard for action to be centred around the Global Partnership on Marine Litter, a non-binding partnership to bring stakeholders together to implement global solutions to plastic pollution, instead of a global and legally binding convention. As if reading from the same script, many asserted that we do not have enough data yet to make binding agreements, and that we need better understanding along the whole life chain in order to set relevant reduction targets based on different litter types. In fact, almost two days of the meeting was taken up by a listing of data and methodology gaps that need to be addressed. This was opposed by the many and increasingly impassioned interventions by delegates from developing nations and NGO players, framing this issue within the context of environmental justice and calling to implement the precautionary and polluter pays principles. Many delegates from developing nations shared personal anecdotes of how they have seen plastic pollution affect their nation: from a Togolese delegate recounting the gradual decline in subsistence fisheries over the years due to an increasing amount of fish being trapped in abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear, to a Peruvian delegate sharing the national campaign to rid their national dish “ceviche” of plastic particles.

These personal recollections showed just how raw this issue is for developing states: it’s not limited to donning a suit and showing up in Geneva for a week of discussions, it is a daily and growing threat to their state, their environment and their people.

What’s next?

The draft recommendations pulled together by the expert group will be discussed and agreed upon at UNEA4, held at UN Environment’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya in March of this year. Ahead of this meeting, many member states called for an assessment of the potential secondary impacts of proposed solutions in order to ensure that we are not creating more and increasingly complex environmental problems in trying to fix this one, such as the increased carbon footprint of substitutes like glass, the difficulty of getting “biodegradable” plastics to industrial composting facilities and ensuring that solutions like higher taxation of plastic do not simply create a black market while affecting poor and vulnerable populations. The division on this issue was palpable at all levels, but waiting to act for scientific certainty or giving deference to business and industry powers is a sure way to limit meaningful steps towards mitigating this problem.